Main Anti Climax Discussion

I'm still seeing many examples of this coming off as overly subjective, being complaints of not the climax wanted as opposed to climatic in it's own way. Given that this often gets confused as a YMMV trope, I think the current definition needs to be made more tangible, or that this be made a YMMV trope.

The second season finale had Shining Armor and Cadance using a powerful shield to knock back the Changelings rather quickly after the latter proven themselves to be a threat by defeating Celestia and the main characters. It's pretty anti-climatic considering it came after an epic battle sequence. Even the episode doesn't know what to do next so it suggested "Uh... dance?" and after that climax, the ending turns back into your typical My Little Pony episode, without almost any acknowledgement that a wide-scale invasion happened, even when one character (a very important one at that) pops in and asked if they missed anything.

Equestria Games. For an episode that's been foreshadowed since Season 3 with numerous episodes building up to it, the end result is not exactly an epic.

In the episode Spike at Your Service, we get this cool buildup to a huge timberwolf as it slowly reassembles itself from pieces of the timberwolves that were killed at the beginning of the episode. After an entrance like that, you'd expect some epic showdown right? Wrong. Spike throws a pebble down it's throat, and it dies. That's it. The damn thing isn't even on screen for thirty seconds.

Despite breaking the mane cast and giving Twilight a Despair Event Horizon, Discord is defeated very easily in The Return of Harmony Part 2. His defeat via the Elements of Harmony may have been anticlimactic, but it's still considered satisfying as heck.

The season 4 premiere gave us flashbacks to Celestia's original confrontations against Nightmare Moon and Discord. Fans had spent a few years speculating how these epic fights went down, and the reveal that both lastedabout a minute leaves something to be desired.

The season 4 finale had a very exciting and over the top battle between Twilight Sparkle (Powered by the Three Alicorns) and Lord Tirek that has been oft-compared to Dragon Ball Z. Was it the final battle? Of course not. Twilight just ends up surrendering her Alicorn Magic to Tirek. Instead, the Mane 6 (Thanks to Discord) get access to their Rainbow Power, and is there an epic showdown between the Rainbow Powered-Mane 6 and the all-powerful Tirek? No. They effortlessly defeat Tirek within seconds. However the episode still isn't done yet, so the show turns back into a My Little Pony episode with a musical dance number to wrap it up. Considering all the buildup and action that transpired beforehand, the end doesn't leave much of an impression.

The fact that these are mentioned in the shows Moment of Awesome pages implies to me that they are climactic, but were criticized for being one-sided. These come off more as complaints then anything else. Should they at least be rewritten to be more tone neutral?

Larkmarn

05:41:36 AM Aug 19th 2015

Anticlimax is intentional. It's not "this should've been better" which would be YMMV.

Only "Spike at Your Service" seems like an actual example. The rest are complaining.

1st Espada Coyote Starrk has seemed quite powerful, devastating his two Vizard opponents with his Cero and energy wolf attacks... until Kyoraku, who he previously blasted in the back, gets up and whips him like a chump in the space of one chapter, adding insult to injury by not even using Bankai.

In all fairness this was mostly because Kyoraku already got a fatal wound in completely by surprise at the end of the chapter previous to that one, so in addition to being forced to play by Kyoraku's rules, he also had that extremely detrimental chest wound slowing him down.

Took this example off the main page, since it seemed to be complaining about endings you don't like:

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has one for its second season finale, in which a simple concept like a wedding suddenly becomes a massive invasion of monstrous creatures that are so powerful, not even the Princess and the heroes can defeat them. So how do they get beaten? Oh. Two brand-spanking new characters with traits eerily similar to a Mary Sue use The Power of Love to make a barrier knocking the monsters into next Sunday. Then for the next six minutes, the wedding proceeds like nothing happened.

Anybody think we should add a "Subjective Trope" banner to this and shift it to the YMMV tab? And also to clean up the examples? Currently the page is being used as a place to vent about movie/game/book endings people don't like (case in point: the highly debated ending to No Country for Old Men isn't universally accepted as an anticlimax).

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